“The magic of Colombia and Latin America isn’t European magic. Magical realism, the literary genre known to many through the work of Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, emerged as a natural corollary, says Bush. Filmmaker friends from the country, he says, “pointed us to Colombia as a crossroads of culture, music and tradition that blended a lot of what Latin America has to offer.” Setting the story in Colombia was no accident, Howard explains. Family misfit Mirabel (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz, from the film version of Miranda’s musical In The Heights) is the only Madrigal child not bestowed with a unique gift, but when she discovers that the magic surrounding the town is waning she becomes the last hope for keeping the family’s traditions and unity alive. The result - directed by Howard and Bush, written by Bush and co‑director Charise Castro Smith and featuring songs by Miranda - is the tale of the Madrigals, a multi-generational family living in a magical house in an enchanted town hidden in the mountains of Colombia. The two also knew, adds Howard, that Lin-Manuel Miranda, fresh from his songwriting work alongside screenwriter Bush on Disney’s Moana, “had wanted for years to do a definitive Latin American Disney musical”. “And we knew we wanted to talk about a big family and the complexities of family life.” ![]() ![]() All those strands came together, though, in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Encanto, thanks to a meeting of minds between former Disney collaborators.Īfter working together on the studio’s Oscar-winning 2016 release Zootopia (aka Zootropolis), Byron Howard and Jared Bush “wanted our next project together to be a musical,” says the former. Families and music are perennial elements in feature animation, but magical realism and the culture of Latin America are more usually the province of highbrow literature.
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